America’s “Three Amigos” are out of tune

The president of MexicoAndrés Manuel López Obrador, sees an opportunity to promote the little-used airport he built north of Mexico City.

“Out of friendship and diplomacy we ask that your plane land at the AIFA“, said Lopez Obrador in one of his usual morning press conferences. On the contrary, “Our opponents, the conservatives, were going to use that to say that the Felipe Ángeles airport was not reliable, that not even President Biden had agreed to go down there.”

The ambition speaks to what the summit is unlikely to deliver: grand strategy.

Biden and Lopez Obrador they may profess to have lofty aims. But due to concerns about domestic political agendas, they have little time to achieve them.

They need to score some points. The Prime Minister of CanadaJustin Trudeau, you can talk about the “electric vehicle supply chain” and enjoy the weather.

Leaving airports aside, Biden he is decidedly the needier of the two. The Government is preparing for new attacks against its immigration policies by the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives, including a possible impeachment against the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas.

The president of the United States must not only offer some solution to a chaotic border overrun with asylum seekers and other would-be immigrants from across the Americas and beyond. He must also address the public health crisis created by fentanyl, smuggled mostly from Mexico, which in 2021 claimed the lives of more than 100,000 Americans by overdose.

Last Thursday, the White House announced a new package of border control measures. In particular, he is being helped by AMLO, who has apparently agreed to expand an earlier agreement for Mexico to receive Venezuelans rejected by the United States to also include Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans.

BidenHowever, it may need more: The announcement said that Mexico will accept up to 30,000 prospective immigrants per month. In November (December statistics are not yet available), border patrol agents encountered nearly 90,000 prospective immigrants from these countries hoping to enter the United States.

There are other pebbles in the shoe of Biden They also come from Mexico. These include AMLO’s protectionist energy policies, which the United States and Canada have considered violate the non-discrimination commitments of the USMCA, the trade agreement that binds the three North American nations. Also included is AMLO’s decision to phase out imports of genetically modified corn, as well as the herbicide glyphosate, probably starting in January 2025, a measure that may violate the USMCA and would deprive corn producers in the Middle West a major export market.

Comparatively, Lopez Obrador it is well established. It still enjoys solid popularity ratings. The odds are good that he can install his preferred successor to the presidency when he ends his term in October 2024.

In recent weeks, he’s been offering grand if implausible thoughts about the future of North America: Ending imports and making America self-sufficient in everything it consumes, opening USMCA to every country in the hemisphere. and embrace European Union-style integration with supranational government institutions.

Such ideas are accompanied by declarations of friendship towards the president of the United States, confusingly leavened with the standard dose of anti-gringo criticism that is always welcomed by the masses in Mexico.

AMLO reprimanded Biden for welcoming Volodymyr Zelensky to “America,” a term that actually encompasses the entire continent. After the Peruvian Congress removed President Pedro Castillo from office last month, he demanded that the United States stop playing games with Peru’s sovereignty. (This occurred just as Castillo’s replacement, Dilma Boluarte, accused AMLO of interfering with Peru’s sovereignty and expelled the Mexican ambassador in Lima.)

Yet despite all the blah blah AMLO you also have real and immediate concerns. He also needs Biden’s help, or at least his leniency.

The United States has softened its complaint against Mexico’s new energy policies, refraining from legal proceedings under the terms of the regional trade pact. But the White House is under pressure from agricultural and energy interests that have a lot of political influence; it cannot be contained forever.

What’s more, despite all its popularity, AMLO it has suffered some political blows recently. Last month, he failed to push through a constitutional amendment to change the system that oversees Mexico’s elections. And more recently, he lost his nominee for the presidency of the Supreme Court and the winner seems eager to press charges that the president’s energy policies violate the Mexican constitution.

However grudgingly received, however, López Obrador could use a little love from Biden.

In what some observers see as an attempt to calm the energy dispute, AMLO He has touted a grand plan with the United States to produce lithium, electric vehicles and solar power in the northern Mexican state of Sonora, in part to serve the semiconductor producers Washington plans to attract to Arizona, across the border.

Before the visit of Biden, Mexican authorities on Thursday arrested the son of jailed drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, a major fentanyl trafficker, sparking violence across the state of Sinaloa. (Guzmán Jr. had been arrested before, in October 2019, but was released on López Obrador’s orders, ostensibly to end the violence that sparked the arrest.)

Perhaps all of them, AMLO, Biden and Trudeau, share an understanding of the need for North America to have a strategy to participate in a changing world. AMLO surely understands that Mexico’s future prosperity depends on its economic relations with the United States, which today buys more than three quarters of its exports. Biden understands how important Mexico is as a provider of cheap energy and labor to his plan to curb globalization and bring production closer to home.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo have been in Mexico to promote CHIPS opportunities there. For his part, John Kerry, The Climate Czar, has been in Sonora. There are agreements to ensure the resilience of critical regional supply chains in the region and things like that. And this summit will offer some more of the same.

This week’s meetings, however, will be mostly about treading carefully. Everyone will be satisfied if they emerge politically unscathed once they are over. And AMLO will be able to boast of the good news that both Biden and Trudeau will be landing at their new airport.

By Edward Porter